What did the earliest companies in Canada compete for?
- Gold mining
- Oil and gas
- Railway contracts
- The fur trade
Answer: The fur trade
Canada’s first companies were formed under the French and British regimes to compete for the fur trade. The best known is the Hudson’s Bay Company, whose French, British and Aboriginal employees came to dominate the trade in the northwest.
Learn more: The fur trade and an early economy
- In 1670 King Charles II of England gave the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) exclusive trading rights over all land draining into Hudson Bay.
- For the next 100 years the HBC competed with traders based in Montreal.
- The voyageurs and coureurs des bois were skilled, brave traders who travelled by canoe and formed strong alliances with First Nations.
- Canada’s first companies were formed under the French and British regimes and competed for the fur trade.
- The HBC had French, British and Aboriginal employees and came to dominate the trade in the northwest.
- HBC trading posts that later became cities: Fort Garry (Winnipeg), Fort Edmonton, Fort Langley (near Vancouver) and Fort Victoria.
- The first financial institutions opened in the late 1700s and early 1800s.
- The Montreal Stock Exchange opened in 1832.
- For centuries the economy was based mainly on farming and on exporting fur, fish and timber, moved by roads, lakes, rivers and canals.